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Illegalism is a tendency within anarchism that emerged in Western Europe in the last decades of the 19th century. Closely linked to and dependent on European individualist anarchism, it encompasses anarchists who aim to carry out their struggle through criminal acts. A significant theoretical foundation for them is the idea of individual reclamation. This concept is the idea that since Capitalism would steal from the people, it would be legitimate to steal back from capitalists. Illegalists were generally characterized by their strong commitment to this principle of individual reclamation.
Historically, illegalism appeared in the 1870s and 1880s following the actions of, among others, Clément Duval, Vittorio Pini, the Intransigeants of London and Paris group, and other organizations. Notable illegalists include Ravachol, who launched the anarchist attacks of 1892-1894, and Marius Jacob with his Travailleurs de la Nuit ('Workers of the Night') group, who inspired Arsène Lupin and industrialized burglary. The Bonnot Gang, comprising members like Jules Bonnot and Rirette Maîtrejean, was a particularly influential illegalist organization in the emergence of modern banditry. Sociologically, illegalists were generally of peasant or working-class origin, and their organizations often included a significant number of Woman.
While some anarchists viewed illegalism as a legitimate movement, others, such as Saverio Merlino and Jean Grave, severely criticized illegalists. They saw these practices as selfish and useless, arguing that local and individual revolutions could not lead to a global one. They presented illegalism as a deviation from an orthodox anarchist dogma. These perspectives were shared by some 20th-century historiography of the anarchist movement, for example by Jean Maitron, before being re-examined and critiqued by more recent historians like Gaetano Manfredonia.
In this context, illegalists defined themselves primarily by their use of criminal methods, such as theft, to wage their revolutionary struggle. Individual reclamation, a practice they developed, involved stealing from Bourgeoisie targets to use the stolen money for survival or to redistribute it to the people or anarchist organizations. Like other anarchists, illegalists were not opposed to rules but viewed state laws as an expression of class justice that largely favored the bourgeoisie—the very class that created these laws. Michel Antoine, a French illegalist, summarized this particular focus on refusing the law in some of his quotes:
One must live as broadly as possible, as freely, as intensely as possible and by all means ... The anarchist does not have to take the law into account. He despises it in principle; he disapproves of it in its exercise and he fights it in its effects.Illegalists were generally strong supporters of propaganda of the deed as a method of struggle. Furthermore, in addition to theft, burglaries, and squatting practices, illegalists sometimes adopted more ironic methods intended to shock the society they lived in. A number of them were thus convicted for 'offense against public morals'.
Summarizing their modes of action, one can say they engaged in theft (individual reclamation), Counterfeit, and also 'déménagements à la cloche de bois'—the practice of moving out without notifying the landlord. This last point, carried out by groups like the Pieds plats or the Ligue antipropriétaire ('Anti-Landlord League'), is considered an ancestor of the more recent practice of squatting by historian Cécile Péchu in her monograph on the subject.
To summarize illegalism, historian Jean-Marc Delpech speaks of a "class struggle envisioned in an individual relationship between the proletarianized dominated and the property-owning dominant".
However, despite the apparent openness of the anarchist movement, it remained very closed to the social claims of certain classes, such as Crime. Being a criminal could even result in exclusion from the anarchist movement. For instance, after Pierre Martinet, an anarchist with a criminal record, attended the trial of one of his companions to defend him, he was excluded by the prosecutor who found it "unworthy" to allow him to speak as a witness. Anarchist groups echoed the prosecutor's accusation and forbade Martinet from speaking on behalf of the anarchist movement. This view was based on the idea that being a criminal was immoral and that a criminal anarchist lacked virtue compared to their non-criminal comrades.
A similar situation occurred when Clément Duval joined the movement. He had to conceal his prior criminal convictions for fear of being excluded from the groups he joined.
The trials of Duval and Pini marked a growing rift among anarchists in France. Older figures in the movement, such as Jean Grave, editor-in-chief of Le Révolté, categorically refused to consider illegalism legitimate. Grave's stance was then deemed authoritarian and erroneous by a significant number of grassroots militants, a fact noted by a police informant who wrote on the matter:
"There are many complaints about Grave and Méreau, the manager."Michel followed the case closely. This issue divided socialists like Jules Guesde and anarchists. While Guesde published writings criticizing Duval and his methods, Michel defended him, marking an even more complete commitment to anarchism. Séverine adopted a hesitant position toward Duval; while she regarded him with sympathy, she remained more distant than Michel.
One such group was the Ortiz Gang, named after Léon Ortiz, and including other militants like Antoinette Cazal or the Italians Maria Zanini and Orsini Bertani. Ortiz, influenced by his encounters with Pini and the Intransigeants of London and Paris, began organizing with Placide Schouppe during the Ère des attentats and other anarchists, forming this gang with them. Operating between Paris, Barcelona, London, Brussels, and Perpignan, Ortiz and his associates managed to evade the French police for some time. Between December 1892 and January 1893, he reconnected with Émile Henry, his friend and another illegalist and individualist—the two participated in burglaries together in northern France.
A good number of the Ortiz Gang members were arrested in early 1894 during a police raid on their hideout. They were subsequently put on trial during the Trial of the Thirty, a political trial aimed at condemning the main anarchists in France, to which the authorities added the members of the Ortiz Gang. Contrary to expectations, the jurors acquitted all the accused, with the exception of Ortiz, who received the harshest sentence (15 years of deportation to penal servitude), and the members of his gang. According to Jean Grave, who was himself acquitted during this trial, the gang members had argued among themselves, trying to shift the blame for the burglaries onto former friends, some of whom even testified against them. Ortiz denied everything, declared that theft was a legitimate revolutionary weapon, and was convicted. This conviction was made possible by the fact that his actions were not considered anarchist by the French authorities, who, in the lois scélérates ('villainous laws'), a series of laws targeting the anarchist movement, established a distinction between 'ideologists' and 'propagandists,' with the latter being much more severely punished—like Ortiz.
The organization of the group and its logistics were meticulously planned. Based in Paris, the Workers of the Night group subdivided into brigades, usually of three people. One person would leave Paris to act as a scout, travel to a target city, and mark the doors of a significant number of bourgeois houses to be robbed. During a second pass, the scout would check their marks, noting where doors had been opened (indicating the house was inhabited) and where the mark remained (indicating the house was uninhabited). The scout would then assess the empty house, its entry points, and the feasibility of burgling it, return to the city center, and send a coded telegram to their two companions, inviting them to join. Once they arrived, the group would force entry into the building and plunder it, generally leaving one of the three as a lookout to warn them of any danger. In some cases, group members didn't use a lookout but instead placed a toad—if they heard its croaking stop, it meant someone was approaching, and the toad served as the lookout.
Between 1900 and 1903, it's estimated that Jacob engaged in at least 156 burglaries—more than one per week—70 of which were brought up in his trial and that of the Workers of the Night. These figures are likely underestimated by French justice, given that a number of burglaries from that era were probably overlooked in police records. Despite his extensive thefts, Jacob didn't significantly profit from the proceeds. According to his own testimony to historian Jean Maitron in 1948, 10% of the stolen goods were systematically donated to anarchist propaganda efforts. Furthermore, he lived with his mother and partner in a relatively modest dwelling and did not flaunt the wealth seized by the group. his arrest, Jacob was tried and sentenced to life in a penal colony. He remained there for over twenty years before being released in 1927 and returning to France.
If through illegalism, the succeeds in freeing himself from a few servitudes, the inequality of the struggle gives rise to others even heavier, ultimately leading to the loss of freedom, the meager freedom he enjoyed, and sometimes even life.According to historian Vivien Bouhey, on the contrary, illegalists at least managed to gain a relatively significant profit that was redistributed for anarchist propaganda. He notes that many anarchist organizations at the time received funds for publishing or organizing from unknown sources, possibly linked to thefts or burglaries. This observation is shared by Delpech, who analyzed the funding of Jacob and the Workers of the Night and highlighted the fact that he financed a good part of French anarchist publications and organizations of the period. Interestingly, while he more or less officially financed individualist publications and organizations, it is probable that he also supported anarchist publications highly critical of illegalism—such as Les Temps Nouveaux by Jean Grave—who was himself a major critic of illegalism.
'Dominant historiography generally considers the bombings of 1892-1894 and illegalist banditry as a mere parenthesis in the history of the anarchist movement. These actions are often perceived as youthful errors that paved the way for anarcho-syndicalism. ... It is interesting to note the use of medical and psychological vocabulary to describe these episodes. These terms darken these two periods of the anarchist movement, presenting them almost as diseases. For example, Daniel Guérin speaks of an 'episodic and sterilizing deviation' and a 'contamination by a chimeric and adventurous virus'. Jean Maitron, for his part, reiterates the idea of acts whose 'sterility was evident' and, paraphrasing Vladimir Lenin, calls them the 'infantile disorder of anarchism'. For Henri Arvon, it is an 'attack of madness' that striked Europe and the world. For Gaetano Manfredonia, while Maitron's analyses "remain valid, they would benefit from being placed within a broader framework: that of the ideological debates that permeated the European anarchist movement around the 1890s". Without this, the historian is limited to evoking the 'dark period of bombings,' as Claude Faber does, or narrating in detail the bloody adventure of the 'tragic bandits'. In other words, this amounts to classifying individualists, from Ravachol to Jules Bonnot, not only among the enemies of order but, above all, among the marginal, the exalted, the 'abnormal', the outsiders. This classification deprives them of any ideological and political consideration.'
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